Historical Praxis as the Ground of Morality

Mihailo Marković

HUMANIST ALTERNATIVES

Once a humanist rejects the
idea of the divine origin of morality he seems to have essentially the following
four alternatives:

(1) A static, ahistorical
relativism exemplified in any empiricist, pragmatist, or structuralist approach.
From this point of view each particular society, each civilization, has a set
of rules which regulate human relationships and maintain a necessary level of
social cohesion. These sets are different and incommensurable paradigms of morality—like
Bachelard's different types of rationalism or Kuhn's scientific paradigms or
Levy Strauss's "codes" for the expression of specific social structures.
This type of approach allows an objective study of each particular paradigm
but rules out the possibility of speaking of a universal human morality. Moral
systems cannot be compared, all concepts of morally "good," "right,"
"ought," or "true" become relative to a specified system
and it does not make sense to evaluate one morality as "better" than
the other.

(2) If this relativism does
not satisfy us, because it tends to devoid general ideas of "human being
and history" of any meaning, we may turn to an absolutism of a Kantian
or phenomenological kind. There is a transcendental concept of man, and of his
practical reason; an ahistorical autonomous good will, a universal moral law—the
"categorical imperative"—provides the basis of all morality. Those
who, like Schiller, reject the identification of the a priori with the
formal and of the a posteriori with the substantial may project moral
values into a particular realm of [36/37] validity (Geltung) outside of both spheres of material world and human consciousness.

(3) Those who, in an age of
a fast historical progress, do not see much merit in such a static conception
of both a formal ethics of duty and of an axiology of values "in themselves"
may prefer the historical absolutism of Hegel. Any particular moral order
within a family, a nation, a civilization, and morality in itself as a form
of consciousness are only objective stages in the development of an absolute
spirit. This approach opens the possibility of comparison and critique of various
moral systems, of seeing their inner limitations, of evaluating one as merely
a particular moment of the other. However the basic assumption of an absolute
mind implies the absence of history, of possible creation of new forms of
morality in the future. The system had to be closed if it claimed absolute truth:
all real development took place in the past.

(4) The legitimate heir of Hegel's
thought, Marx left behind an ambiguous body of ideas. Those which constitute
nowadays the foundation of official Marxist ideologies offer a historical
but relativist conception of morality. According to it there is a true development
of morality in history. Historyand not only the past but also the futuremay
be seen objectively, as a process of growth of social productive forces, and
a succession of increasingly rich and free socioeconomic formations. But history
may also be seen more subjectively as a history of class struggles. Each class
has its own morality rooted in objective material life-conditions of that class.
An overemphasis of the class character of man, a reluctance to see elements
of universal humanity in each individual and class leads back to relativism.
This is obvious not only in the Marxist orthodoxy of both the Second and Third
Communist International, but also in the Marxist structuralism of an Althusser.
Rather than seeing in the future what Hegel established in the past: a process
of totalization of man in general, his progressive enrichment and emancipation,
both orthodox and structuralist Marxists construe history as a series of modes
of production which are separated by social rupturesrevolutions, and
cultural ("epistemological") gaps.

While it could be argued that
Marx himself is very much responsible for this relativist interpretation (consider
Marx's Sixth Thesis of Feuerbach: "Man is ensemble of social relations."),
he also made essential contribution to a humanist, truly historical conception
of morality that goes beyond the wrong dilemma of absolutism versus relativism.

The view of man as a universal
self-consciousness, developed in Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind, was
transcended by a conception of man as a practical being, who creates
his history, his material life conditions, social forms, and morality beyond
any preconceived limit. [37/38]

THE CONCEPTION OF MAN AS A
BEING OF PRAXISA BASIS FOR ETHICS

If we don't wish to give ethics a theological foundation,
and if we, furthermore, don't want to build it on the basis of an arbitrary,
dogmatically postulated absolute standard, we must look for human history as
a possible ground of morality. However if history is taken to be a mere collection
of facts or a mere series of several disintegrated, incommensurable systems,
we would simply relapse into a relativistic positivism—and that is what happened
with official Marxism either in its earlier social-democratic or later Bolshevik
version.

One has to ask if human history
as a whole is a meaningful process or not. Before answering such a difficult
and complex question one could ask a simpler, more general one: What constitutes
the meaning of any life process? Jacques Monod's answer was: teleonomy,
a unique primary object of preservation and multiplication of the species. One
could ask here: What makes this basic project "valuable"? Why is preservation
of species better than disappearance? Why is it better to multiply than
to simply restore the already achieved quantitative level?

The only answer to such a question
is: What is here described as "better" or "worse" is not
merely a matter of subjective preference; it refers to a tendency which is a
necessary part of the very definition of life. Surely not all individuals and
species survive and multiply. But while they do—they are alive. In a similar
way one should add that life involves a tendency to maintain and increase order
and structural complexity: a process of change in the opposite direction of
lesser order and complexity is "bad" for a living organism since it
leads to destruction of life; it is therefore being described in negative value
terms as a process of degradation.

The comparable question with
respect to human history is: What is the primary project of historical development?
Which are objective conditions necessary for survival and development of man,
not as a mere living organism, but as a distinctly human being? A good
deal of things which actually occurred in the course of history do not belong
to such conditions: famines, floods, earthquakes, massacres, destruction. What
made human history possible and indeed uniquein view of an explosive
development during the last few thousand yearswas a specifically human
activitypraxis. Praxis is purposeful (preceded by a conscious
objective), self-determining (choosing autonomously among alternative
possibilities), rational (consistently following certain general principles),
creative (transcending given forms and introducing novelties into established
patterns of behavior), cumulative (storing in symbolic forms ever greater
amounts of information and conveying them to coming generations so that they
can [38/39] continue to build on the ground already conquered), self-creative
(in the sense that young human individuals, after being exposed to an increasing
wealth of information and new environmental challenges develop new faculties
and new needs). Praxis is a new high-level form of the human species. It retains
genetic invariance, self-regulation, teleonomy. But it goes far beyond them.
The plastic genetic material will be shaped in countless different ways by social
conditioning; self-regulation will become more and more conscious and autonomous,
the conservative telos of speciespreservation and multiplication
will be replaced by an entirely new basic project: creation of a rich, manifold,
increasingly complex and beautiful environment, self-creation of men with an
increasing wealth of needs. Many human activities are clearly not instances
of praxis, nor are they characteristic of human history. Repetitive work of
a slave, serf, or modern worker resembles more the building of a beaver's dam
than creative work.

As in the discussion about basic
inherent teleonomy of life, it is possible to ask the question: What is the
good of all this creation and self-creation? Is it not better to go back
to simple organic life in as natural an environment as possible, with a minimum
of needs? And as in the earlier case, the answer is: A different telos
is possible but it would not be the telos of human history. The emergence
of man is this gigantic step from the simple, organic, repetitive, narrow, natural
world to the complex, civilized, continuously developing vastly expanded historical
world, from a poverty of needs and abilities to an increasing wealth of goals
and life manifestations.

A judgment of this kind is still
factual. What has been argued so far is that, as a matter of fact,
the specific characteristic of man and human history is praxis. A
basic normative standpoint is taken when one commits himself to supporting,
stopping, or reversing that trend of growing creativity in history. This is
the point of a crucial bifurcation in ethics.

To commit oneself to increasing
creativity in history, to praxis as the basic axiological principle,
means to assert that it ought to be universally accessible, that it ought
to become a norm of everybody's life. This again means to encourage discovery
of the essential limitation of given social forms, institutions, and patterns
of action; it means to try and explore new hidden possibilities of a different,
richer, more complex, self-fullfilling life, to express them in the form of
ideals, to examine strategies of bringing them about. This type of ethical orientation
is clearly critical and emancipatory.

A conformist, status-quo
preserving approach involves a tendency to reserve praxis for the elite
and to condemn the vast majority of human beings to inferior, not characteristically
human forms of activity, offering [40/41] receptivity as a surrogate
for creativity, and condemning emancipatory ideals as utopian. It resists further
liberation processes but at least tends to retain the level of freedom already
achieved.

A retrogressive normative
attitude to history involves a commitment to the reversal of the historical
trend, to the restoration of already dismantled master-slave social relations.
Servility is offered as a substitute for creativity; the glory of conquest
and domination on the one hand, the honor of serving and patiently, loyally
enduring on the other.

These three basic attitudes
to history are mutually incompatible. The dialogue between those who advocate
them makes sense only in order to establish whether they have been taken consistently
and whether they can be lived in practical life. If this is the case, discrepancy
in value judgments cannot be overcome.

Assuming that we accept the
universalization and continuation of praxis in history as our fundamental
normative standpoint, the question is: What else does it involve, how could
it be further analyzed? What is meant by saying that man is and ought
to be a being of praxis?

(1) In contrast to traditional
materialism and empiricism, man is not merely a reflection of external natural
and social forces, a product of education; he is not only a superstructure of
a given economic structure, but also a subject who, within the constraints
of a given situation, creates himself and reshapes his environment, changes
the conditions under which certain laws hold, and educates the educators. On
the other hand, in contrast to Hegel, man is not conceived as a self-consciousness
only, but as a subject-object who is constrained not only by the quality of
existing spiritual culture but also by the level of material production and
the nature of social institutions. However, precisely because he has both subjective
and objective dimension, both spiritual and material power, he is able not only
to understand his limitations but also to overcome them practically.

(2) Man is certainly an actual,
empirical being. An ethical theory becomes irrelevant when it merely imposes
on him norms which are completely divorced from that empirical reality and have
no ground in it. Certainly, using sophisticated means of manipulation and brute
force, certain obligations and duties can be forced upon a community, but a
true morality cannot be produced in such a way. It has to be autonomous, and
only an actual (individual or collective) subject can lay down its own moral
laws. On the other hand, moral norms, by the very nature of being norms, are never a mere reflection of actual existence. Morality, like every act
of praxis, begins with an awareness of a limitation in actual empirical
existence, in the way we habitually, routinely act. Norms may be already present
in our customary behavior, but these are either legal norms imposed by
force, by the threat of social overt coercion, or customs [40/41]
unconsciously accepted in the process of socialization and blindly followed
like any conditioned reflex. Morality involves a conscious, free choice among
alternatives and that choice transcends the immediate selfish needs of our actual
existenceit expresses long-range needs and dispositions of our potential
being.

Human potential is not a part
of directly observed empirical existence but it belongs to reality of
a person or community, and is empirically testable. Far from being a vague metaphysical
concept, the notion of a potential capacity or of a disposition can be operationalized
by stating explicitly the conditions under which it would be manifested (provided
that those conditions can be produced in specified ways, and the reality of
dispositions tested).

(3) Both in actuality and potentiality
man is in the first place a unique person with quite specific capacities, powers,
and gifts. Man is also a particular communal being: only in a community he becomes
a human, brings to life his abilities, appropriates accumulated knowledge, skills,
and culture created by many preceding generations, develops a number of social
needs: to belong, to share, to be recognized and esteemed. The levels of particularity
are many: an individual belongs to a family, to a professional group, class,
nation, race, generation, civilization.

That is where all relativists
stop: as a particular being man invariably has a particular morality; there
can be no universal standard of evaluation. Philosophers who developed such
universal criteria had either to eliminate historylike Kant in his transcendental
ethics, or like Hegel to construe history as the process of actualization of
a potential universal spiritboth lead to absolutism. The problem becomes
solvable only when the absolute spirit is replaced by the idea of a universal
human species-being. As we saw, that universal is not only spiritual but also
practical, it does not exist in abstracto but only as the basic potential
of concrete living individuals. The descriptive concept of this universal
human nature is constituted by a set of conflicting general dispositions; some
supporting development, creation, and social harmony, some causing conflicts
and destruction. From the standpoint of historical praxis the former are evaluated
as "good" and enter into a normative concept of human nature.
This concept is not fixed since history is, in contrast to Hegel, an open-ended
process. This point of view is not absolutist as Hegel's: man continues to develop
and in the future ever new forms of morality may be expected to evolve. And
yet one need not relapse into relativism. Development in history is continuous;
a translation and incorporation of former practical products and experiences
into the latter remains possible and there are transepochal invariants. Therefore
there are good reasons to argue that, in spite of all discontinuities between
particular epochs and civilizations, there is one [41/42] universal human
knowledge, there is one material and spiritual culture that grows, one human
species-being that evolves through the life of all various individuals and particular
communal beings.

At a given moment of history
there may be one theory that expresses this accumulated knowledge, that already
achieved wealth of human being better than other preceding or coexisting theories.
In the future this theory will also need revision, but at the present its author
could have sufficiently good reasons to hold that his views are more true than
those of his opponents. He may be wrong, but that must be shown by superior
arguments. In the same sense an ethics may be regarded as a superior expression
of a historically already achieved possibility of the good life, of social harmony
and solidarity, in other words: of moral praxis. While refusing to claim its
absolute validity, such an ethics may indeed demonstrate that it transcends
the limitations of all preceding ethical theories and thus incorporates them
as its special cases.

IDEAL COMMUNITY PRAXIS

Once we have established what
constitutes the specific nature of human being and his history our next step
will be to project an ideal community in which praxis would be a universal principle,
that is, in which each individual would have equal opportunities to act in a
purposeful, self-determining, rational, creative way.

Here we have a different theoretical
context than the one in the preceding section. There we considered actual history
but abstracted from it only those intervals and communities where decisive acts
of creativity took placewhether in the sphere of material production,
or building institutions, or in the realm of culture. It was made clear that
most of historical space and time was filled by dull, repetitive work, unproductive
conflict, or mindless leisure. However, those moments of free creation are distinctive
of man and human history.

Now we turn to another context:
what kind of social situation, what kind of human relationships are implied
by maximalization of conditions for praxis of each individual. We have to bear
in mind three basic considerations:

First, belonging to a
community is, on the one hand, a necessary condition for any self-development
and realization of one's potential; on the other hand, it poses certain limitations
for the praxis of each individual. In order to protect the rights of each individual
there must be some democratically established rules of communal life. It is
true that it is in the very nature of praxis that one acts not only in order
to bring to life his capacities and affirm oneself but also to satisfy the needs
of others. And yet [42/ 43] there is a minimum of basic needs that society
must recognize and protect independently of individual initiatives. These rules
are neither legal (because they are not supported by state violence) nor moral
(since they are external and no matter how much the expression of a general
will, they may be to some extent heteronomous with respect to an individual
will).

In order to meet basic needs
of the whole community a certain amount of work is necessary. Surely
at a very high level of productivity the amount of socially necessary work will
be substantially reduced. It will also be so enriched and humanized that it
will tend to coincide with praxis. And yet there is a clear conceptual
difference between work and praxis. The former inevitably involves
a degree of external order and hierarchical organization which is alien to praxis.

Another limitation is scarcity
of those goods which may be necessary for creative activity. Top quality material
products, cultural performances, space, time, and healthy environment will be
scarce in any conceivable community. Too much self-affirmation limits others;
on the other hand, too much self-restraint limits and cripples oneself.

Second, the very
idea of universality of praxis (and since Kant it is hardly controversial that
only those norms are ethical which can be universalized) implies that in some
important respect all members of the community must be equal. The concept of equality needed is neither equality of personal property and
income nor mere equality of opportunity. If individuals with a different genetic
endowment were equally treated (offered equal amount of parents' and teachers'
time, expected to do equal kinds and amounts of work), initial inequalities
would only be fixed or even increased.

This is why in an ideal community of praxis social measures
for achieving true equality must be undertaken right after birth and not much
later, in the sphere of formal education and work. Supplementing whatever parents
may themselves offer, society must provide optimal conditions, for discovery
and realization of most creative dispositions of each child. In contrast to
a society based on uniformity of thought and life-style, in which one becomes
identical with others by destroying his self-identity, here all equally create
their self-identity while staying different from each other.

Only when it comes to limitations
to praxis these are distributed in a way that is alien to praxis, that is, treating
all adult members as identical. Rules of communal life hold equally for all
and when it comes to decide on them by vote, each person must have neither more
nor less than one vote. Socially necessary work is obligatory for all, although
allowing the choice of work that best suits one's capacities, interests, and
skills. Unwanted, unattractive roles may have to be shared by all, in turn.
Analogously, [43/44] concerning scarce goods, the starting point for
trade off or any comparable arrangement must be equal right of each member of
the community.

Third, within
the framework of those indispensable social constraints, an ideal community
offers at any stage of life maximally favorable conditions for praxis of each
individual.

This presupposes accessibility of an ongoing education, the
purpose of which is less to convey technical knowledge and skills for socially
necessary work, and more to bring forth potential talent, to generate a wealth
of needs and a concern with the well-being of others.

Abolition of any monopoly of
economic or political power opens room for universal participation in social
decision-making.

BASIC MORAL VALUES FROM THE STANDPOINT OF AN IDEAL COMMUNITY
OF PRAXIS

The vision of such an ideal
community of praxis, which tends to fully realize all that is distinctly human
in history, constitutes the ethical ground in our present alienated society.

In this ethics the idea of summum
bonum, the highest good, is more distant from actual reality than
in other nonreligious ethical systems. Most of these systems coincide with an
already existing morality and are compatible with given social arrangements,
no matter how unjust. For example, utilitarianism from Aristippus to
Epicurus and from there to Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick, and Moore did not really
challenge the established society, whatever it was. Seeking pleasure and calculating
how to achieve it is an invariant in customary human behavior and even when
it is a maximum amount of it, or highest quality of it and for a maximum number
of individuals, it remains a morality within a given social framework. The same
holds for ethics of duty, whether one of Kant or of Ross and Pritchard. The
sense of duty is formal and it could direct different people in divergent ways.
The apologist of an oppressive system may be prepared to will that the maxims
of his actions should become universal law.

Dewey's pragmatic ethics, with
its emphasis on continued growth, in the sense of an increasing variety of needs
and harmony in their satisfaction, clashes with traditional static morality
but expresses quite well the ideological needs of any modern industrial society.

Examples of ethical theories
that involve rebellious elements but in a harmless individualistic form are
Stoic and existentialist ethics. They offer moral solutions to individuals in
unbearable external conditions. One [45/46] expresses the ideal of spiritual
independence, and serenity that can be achieved by reduction of desires and
withdrawal from the world's competition and conflict. The other commits one
to absolute freedom, disregard of all bonds and imposed constraints, involving
even the risk of death. These two retain their validity for individuals in exceptional
situations but are essentially escapist.

Humanist ethics based on the
notion of praxis projects an idea of eudaemonia, of good life,
which requires radical social transformation. That each human individual should
be able to live as a being of praxis involves a very revolutionary moral demand
of economic, political and cultural liberation, of maximum possible creativity,
of social solidarity. Most of what various ethical theories praised as basic
virtues and ultimate ends finds its place and a new meaning within this context.
Plato's virtueswisdom, courage, temperance, and justiceare no
longer related to a contemplative reason but to a rational activity of shaping
the world according to human capacities and needs. As Butler noticed in theory
and John Stuart Mill in his own life, very little pleasure can be achieved when
it becomes an end in itself, it is only a byproduct that attends attainment
of ends other than pleasure. Stoic peace of soul and spiritual independence
is of limited value when it goes with a poor life emptied of almost any content;
it becomes an entirely different value at a much higher level of material and
cultural development and of social emancipation. Then it will be attained by
renouncing dominating power and accumulation of material wealth, by aspiring
to a free, productive life in a healthy harmonious social environment. In this
context freedom is much more than mere freedom of thought or a desperate act
of choice of an uprooted, isolated existence; it is a way of life that recognizes
needs and interests of other individuals and society as a whole, that within
such inevitable constraints creates ever new possibilities, chooses autonomously
among them and brings the chosen project practically to being.

The idea of a natural moral
law, in the sense given it by Hugo Grotius, as a set of rules based on the universal
nature of man, plays an important role in each humanist ethics; however, it
requires a dynamic reinterpretation. Since human nature evolves in history and
is exemplified in a different unique way in each individual, moral goodness
is not an abstract static concept. Dynamic concepts of traditional ethics such
as self-realization and self-perfection are therefore indispensable, although
they get a new meaning. The self is not an isolated selfish individual but essentially
a communal being, therefore "self-realization" means bringing to life
those potential capacities which do not only affirm its individual interests
but also promote social good. Self-perfection means development of rational,
creative capacities rather than spiritual ascent to God, as in medieval [45/46]
ethics. However there is one great idea in Christian tradition which is superior
to the abstract and uniform treatment of man by many subsequent rationalist
and humanist ethicians. This is the idea that moral goodness is in doing one's
best with one's specific natural endowments and in given circumstances. This
principle of individuation or of personalism has rarely been respected in traditional
ethics which in a rather formal way emphasized general principles, rules, and
duties. Even Hegel, who in his critique of Kant's formalism required a concern
about the content of ethical judgments, thought that content came from the customs,
norms, and laws of the particular society in which the agent lived. This obviously
leads to moral conformismthat is why Hegel saw the highest expression
of morality in the state.

Here we have a dilemma between
an extreme subjectivist conception of morality resting on self-interest
and self-preservation of the individual agent, and an opposite objectivist
view of morality as subordinated to God, or to the state (which itself is
an objective form of Absolute Spirit), or to an abstraction of social good.
In order to resolve that dilemma we must assume that man is both a unique person
and a social being, that he feels genuinely concerned about certain general
needs, without ever surrendering his personal autonomy and integrity. As a result
of socialization an individual internalizes the values of this community; unless
he grows together, communicates, and interacts with other members, one never
develops any moral consciousness. However, as a being of praxis man has a unique
capacity of critical self-consciousness. Therefore, he can come to believe that
there are certain general limitations in the prevailing morality and that he
should not always conform to its norms. He may be wrong and become a social
outcast. But he may also be right and contribute by his deviant moral behavior
to the emergence of a new superior morality.

New morality lives for some
time only in the praxis of the most developed individuals or in the form of
ethical theory. It prevails and begins to be lived by large masses of people
in the times of profound social crisis when the whole social fabric and the
official ideology of the ruling elites collapses and the need for social restructuring
is felt irresistibly.

New morality rejects some traditional
norms or weakens them in the sense that they lose their former high place in
the hierarchy of values. Humanist ethics that emphasizes being rather
than having will no longer give a high priority to the protection
of property or of other characteristically bourgeois institutions. It will no
longer be considered right to kill in the defense of property, to compel one
to pay debts, even when these are unjust and when it involves leaving his children
hungry, to keep promises even when they have been forced by manipulation and
repression, to stay [46/47] married without love, to get wealthy without
work, to discriminate against certain people because they belong to a different
class, sex, race, or church.

Traditionally socialist elements
in this new morality are demands that each member of the community ought to
contribute his share of socially needed work, and that all social goods should
be distributed according to the amount and quality of this contribution but
also according to the specific nature of individual needs. Such norms exclude
any kind of exploitation and privilege on the one hand, and any distribution
according to inherited social status or property, on the other. Socialist ethics
has also always with good reasons insisted on a principle of solidarity, mutual
support, and aid to the weak, poor, old, ill. However there is a void in traditional
socialist ethics which must be filled: neglect of moral issues concerning personal
self-determination, integrity, and inner harmony. Since society cannot be really
emancipated without emancipation of the individual, socialist morality must
allow the possibility that an individual or a particular community may be morally
right against any existing organization, institution, or society as a whole.
Praxis transcends any established order, whenever this order becomes too narrow
for creative novelties. Therefore, moral self-determination is more than a mere
freedom of will: it involves the moral right of the individual to go beyond
social constraints and create new possibilities, also it involves not only an
autonomous act of choice but also action according to choice.

From such an ethical standpoint
personal integrity is placed very highly at the scale of moral valuesin
contrast to duplicity of bourgeois morality which divorces thought, will, and
action. An obvious example may be found in ethics of Hobbes who adopts Christian
moral rules but considers it a folly to act according to those rules, since
all people are selfish, therefore not likely to keep them. The possibility of
such morality depends, then, on the state authority and the law which must guarantee
keeping the rules. Once Hobbes's assumption of the antisocial nature of man
is abandoned, there is no need to split oneself into a beast during the weekdays
and a saint on Sundays, and to support a coercive state machinery in order to
force people into observing an indispensable minimum of morality. An individual
must take the risk and live his moral philosophy only then will he satisfy his
genuine need for harmony between his beliefs, verbal utterances, and overt acts.

Obviously one could resolve
inner conflicts and restore integrity in different ways within a continuum between
egoism and altruism. The optimal solution is such a self-affirmation which also
involves a concern for the well being of other persons. This principle analytically
follows from the very concept of praxis; it excludes both the giving away of
one's life, [47/48] and abuse and disregard of others. It does not impose
love for everybody but recognizes a basic respect and sympathy for another human
being and awareness of his needs.

SOME META-ETHICAL ISSUES

Moore distinguished between
two basic problems in ethics: What states of affairs are good? What actions
are right? He tended to identify "right" with "ought" and
having a "duty." Ross made an important point when he noticed that
there may be special claims on a person (keeping promises, supporting parents)
such that special duties will arise that outweigh the general duty of producing
the greatest possible good.

When we reconsider those concepts
from the philosophical standpoint of praxis we may notice in the first place
that the concept of the morally good is no more undefinable as in Moore. Praxis
is the highest intrinsic good. Consequently all those states of affairs are
good which maximally bring to life human potentialities for free creative, rational
activity in a given historical situation.

Concepts of "good,"
"right," and "ought" (duty) overlap. In most cases what
one "ought" to do is "good," and when we evaluate such action
we shall call it "right." However, in calling it "right"
we emphasize conformity with the rules of the accepted moral "code,"
and since the rules in principle can never cover all phenomena and never do
full justice to development, there may be cases where the right action according
to moral rules is not the best one, if good at all. For example, in the Yugoslav
partisan struggle it was considered right to assign women somewhat less dangerous
and physically difficult tasks, but in cases of some strong, gifted women it
diminished their chance of reaching more responsible roles, which eventually
had undesirable social consequences.

On the other hand, there are
situations where one "ought" to act according to his subjective moral
conviction although an objective analysis would show that the act turned out
to be neither "good" nor "right." This is not only the case
of special obligations Ross speaks about, but also all those cases where one
is deeply convinced that certain moral principles do not apply, where he has
an immediate moral insight that it would be wrong to apply them. This discrepancy
between "ought" and "good" may be reduced when "ought"
is interpreted in an objective wayas what everyone "ought"
to do in a type of situation. Since the preservation of personal integrity
is also one of objective duties and social goods, it may override other considerations
and make an otherwise wrong action the right one. However the basic source of
discrepancy is one between subjective and objective evaluation; what an agent
believes he ought to do need not [48/49] coincide with what is really
good. This discrepancy cannot be always removed, although in ethics based on
the idea of praxis the distinction between the subjective and the objective
is not so sharp as in other philosophical trends.

It is true, morality is an objective
social phenomenon, a set of rules governing behavior, which can be expressed
in symbolic form and studied scientifically. But this is not the objectivity
of a divine order, nor of an Absolute spirit. The rules are products of human
historical praxis. They are applied to a specific situation as it is known to
us and not in itself. From what we believe about the
situation, not from the situation as it is, it will depend what our moral duty
is. We cannot know all the consequences of an action although they are accessible
to empirical study. Even less can we be sure about all the motives and intentions
of the agent. And practical reasoning by which we derive specific moral judgments
from ethical premises is fallibleas we know ever since Aristotle.

And yet moral evaluation is
not an entirely subjective matterjust an ejaculation of emotions,
or an authentic individual choice totally unrelated to reason and any moral
principle. An individual invariably makes a moral judgment as a member of community
in which he was socialized. Therefore he can give reasons for his judgment and
he will use objective logical rules for deriving it from certain general moral
norms. Even when it comes to examining motivesthe most subjective factors
of an actionone may approach a reliable estimate of motivation by communicating
with the agent, checking his reports against other reliable data from his life
history and his conduct, comparing them with reports of other agents in comparable
situations.

Thus subjectivity and objectivity
of ethical judgments constitute a continuum without extreme poles and without
a hard and fast line between two categories.

There is an analogous blurring
of the distinctions between the analytical and synthetic and the
a priori and a posteriori. The concepts retain their validity
but they can be made very sharp only at the price of unacceptable simplification.

All moral judgments are synthetic
in the sense that they inform us about certain characteristics of real human
actions. Even basic ethical principles do not only state explicitly the meaning
of ethical terms but describe the distinctly human properties of historical
praxis. And yet once those properties have been selected and a normative
concept of praxis constituted, certain rules follow analytically.

In a sense all such rules are
a priori: they logically precede ethical analysis and evaluation.
But this is neither the sense of a priori in Kant nor in modern analytical
philosophy. Moral rules are not independent of any [49/50] experience,
a set of timeless, necessary postulates that determine the will, or a set of
arbitrarily laid down premises of a language designed for moral discourse. In
a historical conception of morality there cannot be any norm or principle
which did not emerge out of practical experience, by formulating those habits
and customs which over a long period of time succeeded in preserving social
cohesion, in harmonizing human relations, and in liberating human energies for
great creative efforts. In that sense, moral rules may be considered a posteriori. And yet at each historical moment the very possibility of moral thought
and experience is determined by the existence of those rules and principles;
in that sense, they are a priori.

Now if one rejects a priorism
which tends to make ethical judgments absolute and a posteriorism which
usually leads to relativism, the problem arises whether it is possible to resolve
conflicts among ethical judgments which belong to different ethical systems.
Is there anything comparable to truth in empirical theories?

The answer is: There is.

But, first of all, one has to
clearly distinguish a value conflict from disagreement in relevant facts, incompatibility
of theoretical framework used to describe the situation, and incongruity among
alternative languages. Before there is consensus about relevant empirical evidence,
use of theoretical paradigms (or at least the way of translating from one to
the other), and the implicit logic of the given language, any debate on conflicting
ethical issues is a waste of time.

Two strategies are at our disposal
for the actual resolution of ethical conflicts. One consists in exploring the
foundations of conflicting judgments, the other in testing them against direct
moral experience.

The method of theoretical
examination consists in asking the opponent to justify his judgment and
in challenging the reasons given until one of the three things happen: (1) A
logical mistake in practical reasoning may be discovered, which means that one
of the judgments is wrong from the very standpoint of the system to which it
belongs. (2) Both judgments have been correctly derived from their premises
but the premises express totally incompatible attitudes to history. Continuation
of a rational dialogue is not possible between those who try to reverse history
and revoke an already attained level of emancipation, and those who support
further historical development and a continuing human emancipation. The conflict
stays unresolved in this case. (3) The dialogue between those opponents who
share, at least incompletely, some basic common needs, same cultural heritage,
same interest against third parties, may lead either to the establishment that
one theory is more general and contains the other as its special case, or to
the discovery of a synthesis of the two, of new, more general value principles
which incorporate rational kernels of both conflicting values. [50/51]

The method of testing ethical
judgments is analogous to testing factual theories. In both cases all kinds
of consequences will be derived and checked against experience, ordinary empirical
experience in one case, value-experience in the other. (Dewey was right in taking
an experience of harmonious satisfaction to be the test of right conduct. An
experience of disgust and horror usually accompanies an evil action). In the
absence of practical testing, acting roles that follow from the ethical judgments
at issue may be simulated. Even in a purely verbal discourse, imagining and
describing various situations in which one would have to act according to his
judgment helps to spell out and more fully understand the meaning of that judgment.
The conflict would be resolved if at least one of the opponents, having to practically
apply his abstract judgment in unexpected and unusual circumstances, is not
ready to accept its implications and decides to give it up.

The basic assumption on which
a belief in the possibility of rational resolution of ethical judgments rests
has been very well formulated by Ross. He admitted great variety of moral rules
and evaluations in various civilizations but believed that these were media
axiomata rather than ultimate rules. If circumstances are different and
knowledge of relevant facts in various ways limited, ethical evaluations will
have to be different even if fundamental needs and interests are the same.

And indeed a vast majority of
people would agree thatother conditions being equallife is preferable to death, creativity to destructivity, freedom to slavery,
communal solidarity to brute egoism, material wellbeing to poverty, development
to stagnation, independence to being dominated, dignity to humiliation, autonomy
to heteronomy, justice to abuse, peace to war. Disagreements arise about hierarchy
of such universal values and especially because other conditions are
really not equal. Life need not be preferable to death when the price for it
is loss of dignity, peace need not be preferable to war when it leads to loss
of freedom.

Humanist ethics of this kind does full justice to historical
variety without any support of relativism. And it secures a satisfactory degree
of objectivity while rejecting any form of dogmatism and absolutism.

Comment by Paul Kurtz on Marković
Article

There is much that I find sensible
and can agree with in Mihailo Marković's rich and provocative essay. I
find many of his comments responsible and humane. It is his basic ethical postulate
and what he intends us to do [51/52] with it in building the "good
society" that concerns me. I am dubious of any attempt to locate in history
an ultimate ground for ethics, and hence I find his concept of "historical
praxis" somewhat troubling, for there are many tendencies and directions
in history and different social and value systems. Accordingly, to attempt to
read a progressive development or a higher standard of value into history is
open to any number of skeptical questions. I fear that the reasoning is circular.
History is used by Marković as a mask for his valuesmany of them
I share and are humanistic and democratic—but is he not selecting those features
that he finds preferable from his moral vantage point? Why cannot a Christian
do the same, by reading some Divine plan into history and interpreting events
as they relate to the Second Coming of Christ. A Muslim will no doubt view history
as the fulfillment (or lack of it) of Mohammed's word, always using that as
a criterion for evaluating social systems. A liberal democrat might consider
from his vantage point the so-called existing socialist societies in the world
as totalitarian and retrogressive. A devotee of the space age might argue
that the whole of human history and the destiny of man is focused on our effort
to escape from the solar system and populate the universe beyond. Marković
seems to be committing one form of the naturalistic fallacy by defining as intrinsically
"good" one aspect of human history ("praxis") and then reading
that into the process as a ground for his preferences. All moral judgments,
he says, are "synthetic," and basic ethical principles (in part) "describe
the distinctively human properties of historical praxis." But we may ask,
why should we accept this definition of Marković as binding?

I believe that Marković
and the praxis school of Marxist Humanism that he represents have made important
modifications of Marxist theory, but have they gone far enough? Or is the ontological
Dialectic (which is no more than a guide for analysis) still lurking? For I
do not know what it means to say that history as a whole is a "meaningful
process." This seems to me to be substituting one theology for another.

Marković focuses on a set
of ethical values that he relates to praxis. By "praxis," Marković
means "creativity." He wishes to expand this concept and to make it
universally accessible as a norm of everyone's life. His standard apparently
is the continuation and universalization of praxis in history. "In spite
of all discontinuities," he argues, ". . . there is one material and
spiritual culture that grows, one human species." He goes on to say that
"at a given moment of history there may be one theory that expresses this
accumulated knowledge . . ." But again this may be viewed as an expression
of Marković's own value bias.

Not that I do not agree with
him about the value of "creative praxis," or the need to be concerned
with humanity and the species as a whole. [52/53] Simply, I do not believe
that it can be enshrined in the womb of history or "historical praxis."
Human history can go either way, as the recent Gulags of Stalin and Hitler tragically
testify. Various forms of repression have existed in the world at different
epochs: feudal, monarchial, capitalist, and communist societies. The recent
totalitarian horrors are in many ways more reprehensible than anything that
appeared earlier. Clearly there are progressive developments in human history:
the elimination of illiteracy, the increase of knowledge and education, the
overcoming of poverty and disease, the improvement of the standard of living
for the average person, the advance of modern technology and science, the development
of freedom, the opening up of many societies to mobility and reform. But I am
apprehensive of any mono-historical theories and submit that a pluralistic view
of history, in which new and often unexpected changes and trends occur and in
which there are many values and norms that emerge, is more accurate.

I am especially worried about Marković's theory when
he goes on to develop the concept of "an ideal community in which praxis
would be a universal principle." By this he means "each individual
would have equal opportunities to act in a purposeful, self-determining, rational,
creative way." A liberal democrat might not disagree with this latter principle,
but the key question concerns first, the role of freedom and its precise meaning,
and second, the kind of "radical social transformation" that it would
necessitate. As to freedom, one cannot help but fear that it may be subjected
to "equality" and "solidarity." "Self-realization"
and "self-perfection" says Marković though indispensable, "get
a new meaning." The self is not an isolated selfish individual but essentially
a "communal being." Marković talks about a "new morality"
that will transform society. What guarantee do we have that new elites will
not develop and new repressive systems instituted that will compel individuals
to be creative, as defined by someone else? Marković is opposed to bureaucratic
elites, but what is the assurance that they will not again emerge? Why should
any one group, offering what it believes to be a superior theory, attempt to
transform the basis of existing society, religion, science, or ethics in order
to bring into being a new one consonant with its vision? Why should any group
be allowed to guide or control the destinies and fortunes of the entire human
species? I am surely not against social change, even radical change, but the
risk of dealing with the totality of human existence in the name of a utopian
ideal raises the question: what right does any one group claim to serve as the
guardian of all? I have no objection to democratic persuasion, but if the majority
never agrees, then what? I have no objection to postulating imaginative images
of the future, drawn from the study of history, but I [53/54] demur when
there is an effort made to impose them on everyone else. I am not suggesting
that Marković would seek to do this, but I am apprehensive of those who
in the name of history have.

In the later part of his paper,
Marković discusses theoretical questions and he asks how we go about testing
ethical judgments: against experience, he says, and by practical means. I agree
with this statement fully. I wonder why then we must seek to anchor our judgments
and/or give them the sanction of history. Why not deal with them in their own
terms without seeking to justify them by the myth of history? Why not recognize
that "praxis" is a normative value that if spelled out in concrete
terms has meaning and can be illustrated and/or justified without resort to
a mystique? Why not have a free society in which those who wish praxis for
themselves can have it, but in which those who do not wish it are allowed
to go their own ways fulfilling any destiny that they may wish, however disparate
it may be from the current utopian ideal defended by the intellectuals?

Reply by Mihailo Marković to Kurtz

I understand Paul Kurtz's worries
and share his concern about any repressive power that would try and impose
one system of ethics on the entire human species. He seems to believe that
either one has to merely assert the fact that there is a plurality
of moral values or else one tends to impose a utopian ideal on others.
I agree with him that one has to recognize the existence of different moral
systems but this recognition is a mere sociological judgment. And even
if one recognizes the right of all those different value systems to exist,
one is still on the ground of law and not yet of morality. Since Kant, it is
clear that the minimal requirement that a norm has to meet in order to be qualified
as ethical is its claim to universality. There is indeed a plurality
of moral views and each of them is moral if and only if its norms can be formulated
as universal rules. Kurtz is surely aware of that when his own moral principles
are in question: he surely does not believe that freedom is good for some people
and not good for others. It is a moral principle precisely because it is good
for all human beings.

Kurtz does not see, apparently,
the distinction between claiming universal validity of our own moral
norms and imposing them by force on others. As to the latter, it is not
only equally unacceptable to me as to Kurtz, I even consider it a duty to struggle
against that form of repression, [54/55] and this duty is moral since
I believe that everybody ought to engage in this kind of struggle. But, on the
other hand, there cannot be any tolerant ethical dialogue unless opponents have
genuine convictions. There cannot be ethical pluralism without those
conflicting claims to universal validity. A situation in which each group would
consider its values as bad for others should be described as lack of morality
rather than moral pluralism. The latter is the case when various groups or individuals
have genuine moral convictions with implicit claims to universal validitybut
these convictions are different or even incompatible.

That is where the need for a
foundation of ethical values arises. One has to answer the question:
What is the ground on which his implicit claim to universal validity rests?

Kurtz says that he is "dubious
of any attempt to locate in history an ultimate ground for ethics." Where
else? Where else does he believe he can locate his own ground? There are two
other possibilities. One is Godthat one I shall rather not discuss. The
other is cosmic order. Much of ancient ethics was based on a belief in an ideal
world order which is to become a prototype for an ideal conduct of human life.
Certainly one was able to find in the cosmos as much ethically relevant order
as one put it there. It would be somewhat odd if a present day humanist would
study galaxies and black holes in order to establish ground for his ethics.
Consequently, where else to look for ground of ethics but in human history?

Of course, all kinds of things
can be found in history or projected into it. Paul Kurtz misses the whole point
if he really believes that anyone can justify anything by referring to a mere
multitude of events and tendencies of history. The crucial question is: What
made possible the survival and development of man as a distinctly
human being? That an impressive development did take place
is an indubitable fact. This is not something that I invented and projected
into history. This is not an eschatological goal comparable to the second
coming of Christ, fulfillment of Mohammed's word, or making a trip to some neighborly
star. Not only is the development of knowledge, of power to control natural
forces, of a wealth of forms of social life, of political institutions, or arts,
of the means of communication an indubitable fact, it is a fact most specific
for human history. This manifold development of communicative power, of
reason, of creativity is precisely what distinguishes men from animals, plants,
and all other objects in the world.

So far we are entirely on factual
ground, discussing general features of the past history. What has been asserted
and is open to debate is a matter of fact, not of values. The normative dimension
in this whole procedure of grounding ethics, the step from is to ought,
appears only when we ask the question: Whether this creative development ought
to continuetherefore, [55/56] ought to be supportedor
ought to be stopped or reversed. Kurtz again misses the point expressing
his disbelief that creative praxis can be "enshrined in the womb of history."
Surely, history can go in different ways. But history is history of human individualsno
need, Paul, for capital H: I am not Hegel, nor even Lukacz. Whether it will
go toward new fascist empires, Gulag and Vietnams, or in some better direction,
it will depend on the activity, ideas, commitments, and sense of responsibility
of us who live and more or less, in one way or other, determine the course of
historical events.

Paul Kurtz finds reasons to
worry about my ethical commitment to an ideal community in which "each
individual would have equal opportunity to act in a purposeful, self-determining,
rational, creative way." What worries me is that a humanist and liberal
democrat should worry so much about equality and solidarity. We are certainly
not equal persons and for that reason should not be treated equally. Different
persons must be treated differently in order to reach most important equality
of condition for full development. What makes freedom an ethical concept (in
contrast to the "freedom" to oppress and exploit and bore others)
is precisely that it involves equal freedom of all to get a decent education,
to be able to grow, work according to ability, satisfy basic needs, fulfill
one's creative potential. Kurtz is afraid that all these things will be imposed
on people, that people will be compelled to be creative. The irony
of this argument is that he does not seem to be afraid, or alarmed, or disgusted
by the fact that societies in which we live now are dominated by elites which
at the one scale prevent people to be creative. But while no guarantee
can be offered to Kurtz that new elites will not developthere are too
many variables in any historical process, and morality is only one of themI
may emphasize that from my ethical standpoint no form of repression is admissible.
Ethics based on principles of self-determination and creativity implies norms
which condemn any self-appointed elite of power and any striving for domination.

At the end of his comment Paul
Kurtz raises the question: Why is it necessary to anchor ethical judgments and
give them the sanction of History if we can test them and deal with them in
their own terms? This is a general issue of justification of any theorywhether
factual or normative. If immediate experience suffices to justify a theory,
then, judging from what we all observe Ptolemy was always right after Copernicus.
Anyway, once we got Kepler's laws why did Newton seek to anchor these in terms
of a "mystical" gravitational force?

It is a basic characteristic
of rationality to seek to establish connections between all elements of knowledge
and to show how they necessarily follow from a minimal possible number of premises.
An ethical theory that would merely postulate a number of ethical norms and
leave them side by [56/57] side without linking them and showing how
they follow from a minimum of ethical principles (which are, on their part linked
with the rest of knowledge)would be a rather primitive theory.

I have tried to show how all
ethical values may be grounded on one basic value assumption: Praxis is good.
It cannot be derived from any factual judgment (which would constitute
the naturalistic fallacy) but it is linked with a basic factual
assumption"Praxis is enente of history," or more clearly: "Praxis
is the specific necessary condition of all historical development."